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en-usTechdirt. Stories filed under "bureaucrats"https://ii.techdirt.com/s/t/i/td-88x31.gifhttps://www.techdirt.com/Tue, 28 Oct 2014 10:18:00 PDTYou Can't Vote Out National Security Bureaucrats: And They, Not Elected Officials, Really Run The ShowMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141026/06200428940/you-cant-vote-out-national-security-bureaucrats-they-not-elected-officials-really-run-show.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141026/06200428940/you-cant-vote-out-national-security-bureaucrats-they-not-elected-officials-really-run-show.shtmlthen had to go ask the NSA what it was up to. That seemed somewhat concerning to us -- suggesting that the administration wasn't actually aware of what the NSA was up to until after it leaked to the press. Combine that with our more recent story of how James Clapper is basically ignoring the substance of President Obama's called for surveillance reforms, and you might begin to wonder who really runs the show when it comes to surveillance. And, indeed, according to a guy who knows quite well, the national security bureaucracy basically calls the shots, and the President has little to no power. That's the basic summary of an interview with Michael Glennon under the title Vote all you want. The secret government won't change in the Boston Globe.

Though it’s a bedrock American principle that citizens can steer their own government by electing new officials, Glennon suggests that in practice, much of our government no longer works that way. In a new book, “National Security and Double Government,” he catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term “double government”: There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy.

Glennon cites the example of Obama and his team being shocked and angry to discover upon taking office that the military gave them only two options for the war in Afghanistan: The United States could add more troops, or the United States could add a lot more troops. Hemmed in, Obama added 30,000 more troops.

And, yes, of course, there have long been conspiracy theory books about the "shadow government" and the like, but this one's from someone who actually worked on these issues.

He was legal counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a consultant to various congressional committees, as well as to the State Department. “National Security and Double Government” comes favorably blurbed by former members of the Defense Department, State Department, White House, and even the CIA. And he’s not a conspiracy theorist: Rather, he sees the problem as one of “smart, hard-working, public-spirited people acting in good faith who are responding to systemic incentives”—without any meaningful oversight to rein them in.

Basically, the story that Glennon describes is sort of an exact replica of the concerns that many people have about how lobbyists push legislators in a particular direction. While many like to ascribe nefarious intent to lobbying efforts, the reality is that oftentimes legislators don't fully understand a particular or specific area, and the people they turn to are the lobbyists. And, to some extent that's reasonable. You'd rather that regulators and legislators actually are informed about the issues they're making decisions on, but too often they don't understand those areas at all. The problem is that the "experts" who are readily available aren't unbiased purveyors of truth, but are those who have a very specific agenda.

The same thing is true of government bureaucrats within the intelligence community. They're going to advise elected officials in ways that continually push and expand their own capabilities and powers, rather than limit them. And while what happens with lobbyists is often not directly publicly viewable, there can at least be some public recognition of policies and regulations that come out of those discussions. When it comes to the intelligence community, many of the results are kept entirely secret, so there's basically no pushback and no "other side" heard. The intelligence community acts as secret lobbyists for the expansion of the surveillance state, and the government basically says "okay." And that doesn't even begin to go down the road of recognizing how much of this "expansion" of the surveillance state also happens to massively benefit the private corporations that former intelligence officials jump to right after leaving the government. Glennon covers all that and more:

It hasn’t been a conscious decision....Members of Congress are generalists and need to defer to experts within the national security realm, as elsewhere. They are particularly concerned about being caught out on a limb having made a wrong judgment about national security and tend, therefore, to defer to experts, who tend to exaggerate threats. The courts similarly tend to defer to the expertise of the network that defines national security policy.

The presidency itself is not a top-down institution, as many people in the public believe, headed by a president who gives orders and causes the bureaucracy to click its heels and salute. National security policy actually bubbles up from within the bureaucracy. Many of the more controversial policies, from the mining of Nicaragua’s harbors to the NSA surveillance program, originated within the bureaucracy. John Kerry was not exaggerating when he said that some of those programs are “on autopilot.”

And the end result is basically that elected officials don't really have the power to do anything, even if they're technically "in power."

I think the American people are deluded... that the institutions that provide the public face actually set American national security policy. They believe that when they vote for a president or member of Congress or succeed in bringing a case before the courts, that policy is going to change. Now, there are many counter-examples in which these branches do affect policy.... But the larger picture is still true—policy by and large in the national security realm is made by the concealed institutions.

All the more reason why Snowden's revelations were so important. They've helped expose just a tiny fraction of these policies being decided in near total secrecy by the intelligence community to further its own agenda -- leading to some much needed sunlight, finally forcing at least a tiny bit of debate into that corner of the world that thrives on being able to expand in secret.

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]]>well,-that's-unfortunatehttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20141026/06200428940Fri, 11 Jan 2013 14:00:14 PSTDo We Really Want EU Bureaucrats Deciding What Google Search Results 'Should' Look Like?Mike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130111/07473421641/do-we-really-want-eu-bureaucrats-deciding-what-google-search-results-should-look-like.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130111/07473421641/do-we-really-want-eu-bureaucrats-deciding-what-google-search-results-should-look-like.shtmlany evidence that Google's search results were somehow anticompetitive. All of the evidence pointed to the same basic thing: what Google did was for the benefit of its users. While some competitors were upset about it, antitrust should not be about propping up competitors who can't compete, especially if consumers are not being harmed. Besides, if you actually look at the "competitors" who complained the loudest, many of them are doing quite well these days.

Of course, those competitors who spent so much effort pushing to force Google through the antitrust gantlet were pretty upset about the end result. However, they knew what was coming next and warned that Europe would come out with an answer that was more to their liking. And the latest on the EU antitrust investigation suggests that, indeed, European bureaucrats somehow believe that they know better than Google what its search results should look like, and they're planning to force Google to change its results to the bureaucrats' liking.

[Europe's antitrust chief Joaquin] Almunia said in the interview: "We are still investigating, but my conviction is [Google] are diverting traffic," adding: "They are monetising this kind of business, the strong position they have in the general search market and this is not only a dominant position, I think -- I fear -- there is an abuse of this dominant position."

I'm not quite sure how one "diverts" traffic if the solution being provided is reasonably deemed to be better for the consumer. You can only show so many things on a search page, and Google spends a lot of effort figuring out which way seems to get the best results. No matter what, it's going to "divert" traffic from those it doesn't pick to those it does. But that's the business. The better it diverts traffic to help consumers, the better off the public is. And I'm not sure how the user is made "better off" by European politicians determining where Google needs to point people with its results.

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]]>this won't end wellhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20130111/07473421641Fri, 14 Dec 2012 06:42:26 PSTITU Boss In Denial: Claims Success, Misrepresents Final Treaty, As US, UK, Canada And Many More Refuse To SignMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121214/05385721386/itu-boss-denial-claims-success-misrepresents-final-treaty-as-us-uk-canada-many-more-refuse-to-sign.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121214/05385721386/itu-boss-denial-claims-success-misrepresents-final-treaty-as-us-uk-canada-many-more-refuse-to-sign.shtmlgoing back on explicit promises that the treaty would (a) not be about the internet and (b) would only be completed by consensus, rather than by majority vote -- the US lived up to itspromise not to support such a treaty by officially stating that it would not sign. A number of other countries quickly followed suit including: the UK, Canada, Denmark, Australia, Norway, Costa Rica, Serbia, Greece, Finland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Sweden, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Qatar (though some apparently said they could not sign because they first had to consult with their own governments -- so it's possible that some of these may change their mind, but many viewed such statements as a more diplomatic way of refusing to sign).

The US, on the other hand, was explicit in refusing to sign:

"It's with a heavy heart and a sense of missed opportunities that the US must communicate that it's not able to sign the agreement in the current form," said US Ambassador to WCIT Terry Kramer. "The Internet has given the world unimaginable economic and social benefit during these past 24 years. All without UN regulation. We candidly cannot support an ITU Treaty that is inconsistent with the multi-stakeholder model of Internet governance," Kramer added.

The US delegation also laid out the specific reasons why it refused to sign, and they're the same issues we've been talking about all along: (1) the attempt to expand the definition of the types of entities covered by the treaty from the big telcos to just about everyone running network (2) the explicit inclusion of internet and internet governance in the treaty (3) the claim of a mandate over cybersecurity and (4) the official regulation of spam. That last one hasn't received as much attention, but the US found the rules put forth for dealing with spam going way too far, and putting in place rules that would violate the First Amendment.

Of course, with so many countries bailing out, the ITU's promise that this would all be about consensus look positively laughable in retrospect. But, perhaps even more laughable is the response from ITU boss Hamadoun Toure whose claims read like those of a bureaucrat in complete denial. First he claimed complete "surprise" that the US and other countries walked away:

I couldn’t imagine they wouldn’t sign it. I especially was surprised by the reasons that were put in place. I had made it clear from the opening that [Internet and content were not a part of the discussion]. I invited ICANN to show that we want to build bridges. The telecoms society and internet society need to work together. I made an appeal to please help us build bridges. The fighting will not help the consumer that we are trying to reach here.

He kept going on and on insisting that the internet and internet governance were not a part of the agreement, even though they are. Of course, he then effectively admits that part of the goal is to be the key player in the internet

I have been saying in the run up to this conference that this conference is not about governing the Internet. I repeat that the conference did NOT include provisions on the Internet in the treaty text. Annexed to the treaty is a non-binding Resolution which aims at fostering the development and growth of the internet – a task that ITU has contributed significantly to since the beginning of the Internet era, and a task that is central to the ITU’s mandate to connect the world, a world that today still has two thirds of its population without Internet access.

So it's not about the internet, but the internet is central to the ITU's mandate. Of course, this claim is also a lie. The ITU's mandate does not cover the internet, but telecom infrastructure. One of the more nefarious moves by Toure and the ITU in this whole process was to continually blur the lines between telecom infrastructure and the internet, as if they were one and the same.

The word “Internet” was repeated throughout this conference and I believe this is simply a recognition of the current reality – the two worlds of telecommunications and Internet are inextricably linked. I demonstrated that from the very beginning by inviting my friend Fadi Chehadé, the CEO of ICANN, to address our conference at the beginning.

So... again, he's saying two different things. First, he claims that the treaty has nothing to do with the internet, and then insists that telecommunications and the internet are "inextricably linked," which explains why the treaty pretty clearly would impact internet governance -- which is why so many nations are refusing to sign.

Finally, there's this bit of self-aggrandizing bullshit:

History will show that this conference has achieved something extremely important. It has succeeded in bringing unprecedented public attention to the different and important perspectives that govern global communications. There is not one single world view but several, and these views need to be accommodated and engaged.

WCIT has shown us this truth and we have worked hard together to find a way that is acceptable to all. Let WCIT be the beginning of this dialogue. As our two worlds increasingly converge so must we increasingly converse and find a common way.

To be honest, this feels like a speech that was written before the events of the past two weeks, perhaps at that secret meeting to plan its media strategy. To sit there and claim that WCIT was about finding a way "acceptable to all" and one in which the focus was on "finding a common way" is especially laughable, given how the whole thing concluded. History may very well show that something extremely important was achieved, but it may just be that the achievement was demonstrating clearly what a charade the ITU is, and making it clear that it is not the right organization to have anything to do with internet issues. The ITU has been shown, once again, to be an out-of-date, out-of-touch, obsolete organization searching for relevance.

The simple fact is that the world does not need an ITU to "enable" the internet. The internet was built and expanded rapidly through other means, driven by demand and what it enabled people to do. The current system is not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but it has been working, and shifting to a model driven by international bureaucrats was never in the cards.

The internet does not need the ITU. The ITU needed the internet to remain relevant. The internet, however, does not work that way, and any attempt to move it into such a system of bureaucratic oversight was doomed from the start.